Maybe it's just this darn safety sippy. I can't see if she is really drinking it or not. I'm going to try at a restaurant and see. She likes to do the straw when I use my finger to drip it on her tongue, but I've never just given to her without help.

I am being pressured to switch to a sippy from a bottle. Wolerine takes bottles of expressed milk when I am gone. It is actually the only way he naps. So it is reccomended to switch to a sippy at 1year? He drinks water from all kinds of stuff. sippys, straws, camelbak with a straw but always gets water everywhere! That is perfectly fine because whatever.. its water. What I am worried about is switching him to a sippy or straw cup or whatever and that stuff being spit and spilt everywhere being my breastmilk I work hard to pump for him. Anyone hae any experience with this type of situation and hae something that worked? Or did you just keep using a bottle for breastmilk after 1y?

Butternut - I did have to drink out of the straw once myself to make sure it was coming out. Something about the slit in the straw needed to be opened up first. Then he drank out of it fine. So maybe you just need to make sure it is actually coming out of the straw?

_________________I'm not asking for utopian dreams...just a little peace in this world. That's a logical thing. - Deee-Lite

Well we get WIC and the people there are. I guess that is it. They said I need to start working on it so he is off the bottle by a year. I also keep geting babycenter etc articles about it. I just kind of feel bombarded by it. IRL, internets, email etc. Like "Do this because this is what all responsible parents do or all your kids teeth will rot out!" He is 8 months and right now takes at most 3 bottles 3 days a week. He does use them to fall asleep but he never falls asleep with any milk in his mouth. He sucks the bottle down and then sucks on the empty bottle till he is asleep. Pretty much the same as he does to my breast. That is the ONLY way he will fall asleep now. We have tried other methods but it takes 3 plus hours to get him to sleep.

Well we get WIC and the people there are. I guess that is it. They said I need to start working on it so he is off the bottle by a year. I also keep geting babycenter etc articles about it. I just kind of feel bombarded by it. IRL, internets, email etc. Like "Do this because this is what all responsible parents do or all your kids teeth will rot out!" He is 8 months and right now takes at most 3 bottles 3 days a week. He does use them to fall asleep but he never falls asleep with any milk in his mouth. He sucks the bottle down and then sucks on the empty bottle till he is asleep. Pretty much the same as he does to my breast. That is the ONLY way he will fall asleep now. We have tried other methods but it takes 3 plus hours to get him to sleep.

Oh, man. My advice is to get your kid to sleep however you can! I still boob R to sleep and he is 2. The boob is the only thing that works without taking ages. It is like Boob: asleep in 5 minutes. No boob: asleep in 1-3 hours.

tank, we did switch to sippycups at 1 year because D was formula-fed so she stopped getting formula and got hempmilk instead. I can understand your worrying about any waste of precious breastmilk though! maybe get her started on a sippycup with water and then when she gets good with it, switch out her nighttime bottle.

We also did the same exact thing (and still kinda do with her at 3yrs old, BAD PARENTS) with the letting her fall asleep with the cup because dammit, she falls asleep quietly and without us having to lay down/hang out etc as long as she has the cup! She drains the milk out of the cup immediately - especially these days, because we only give her an inch of it - and then just hangs out with the cup. If she wakes in the middle of the night, she will always settle herself - and has been doing so since she was about a year old - as long as she can find the cup. It's like a lovey for her. However, this part of my post truly belongs in the bad mommy thread because now at 3yrs old, she is completely hooked on that nasty old cup and once we tried to switch it out for the same EXACT cup, just new, and she freaked out so bad we caved. Now, I'm not saying this will happen with your kid, but I guess we just valued having her go to sleep easily the past couple years and now we're embarrassed and don't know what to do.

1) The baby's 8 months old. A year old would be another 50% of his life - you have no idea what's going to change in that time and the issue may be moot by then.

2) I have had friends on WIC. I feel badly for saying this, but my advice is to lie or say whatever you need to say to get them off your back. From what I've read, 12-18 months is the usual weaning time from bottles and that's generally talking about formula fed babies - there is no reason to start pressuring you at 8 months! WIC generally does a bad job supporting breastfeeding and you shouldn't let them make you feel like a bad mother because you're doing what you need to do to keep getting breast milk in your kid. Malka is formula fed, but our plan is to continue on formula past 1 year because it's much more nutritious than just plant milk and she's not a great eater. I plan on continuing to give her a bottle until she's much more masterful with a cup than she is now (which is not at all).